Tag Archives

When you possess the infallible truth dissent is evil, compromise is surrender, and the opposition is demonized and pathologized. But the fundamental assumptions are never questioned; the heliocentric model of the solar system was rejected because it undermined the faith in the Church. The social scientific outlook requires a religious like faith in its institutions that means it never admits failure or defeat. Arrogance is the great enemy of democracy and political deliberation.

“If the page is written but we imagine it is blank, then we will act from ignorance, and live our lives without a knowledge of the truth, although the truth is there for us to know. But worse yet, if the page is blank and we imagine it is written, then we will enslave ourselves to our own fantasies, and live like mad men or lunatic mimes, running into walls which are not really there.”

“Certainty, as we have seen throughout our tale, is a dangerous powerful force. If it proves true, then it can establish necessary limits on human action. But if it proves false, is it so often does, then it can create unnecessary barriers – imaginary cages in which we are needlessly trapped. “

Levin observes that for the left it is forever 1965 and we are just one huge federal program away from supreme social justice. For the right it is forever 1981 and we are just one big tax cut away from economic nirvana. The conditions of 1965 or 1981 no longer exist.

“The best case for capitalism is a case for markets as one crucial set of institutions in a free society deeply rooted in the West’s liberal and pre-liberal soil. It is crucial because at its best it protects every man’s right to the fruits of his labor, encourages virtues crucial to living free, and has proven unbeatably capable of improving everyone’s living standards. But it must remain rooted, because man does not live by bread alone, and because both the market and the larger society depend upon other formative institutions that help us all become better human beings and citizens.”

“It’s not the free market that is financializing the American economy and empowering Wall Street’s leveraged buyouts of American businesses. It’s the federal government’s preferential tax treatment of corporate debt and guarantee of “too big to fail” bailouts.”

Yuval Levin recently wrote TheFractured Republic, an intelligent look at the state of political discontent, and a recommended read. He recently wrote Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy with coauthor Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. He examines three…

Yuval Levin recently wrote TheFractured Republic, an intelligent look at the state of political discontent, and a recommended read. He recently wrote Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy with coauthor Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. He…

Yuval Levin recently wrote TheFractured Republic, an intelligent look at the state of political discontent, and a recommended read. He recently wrote Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy with coauthor Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. He examines three…

Yuval Levin recently wrote TheFractured Republic, an intelligent look at the state of political discontent, and a recommended read. He recently wrote Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy with coauthor Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. He examines three…

Yuval Levin recently wrote TheFractured Republic, an intelligent look at the state of political discontent, and a recommended read. He recently wrote Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy with coauthor Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. He examines three…

Yuval Levin wrote The Fractured Republic, a very intelligent look at our political condition and highly recommended. Below is as excerpt from his recent article in National Review, Hillary Is an Embodiment of the Left’s Disdain for Democracy: First, contemporary liberalism…

Don Boudreaux in his excellent Cafe Hayek quotes from Matt Ridley’s The Evolution of Everything. I consider this the best new book of the year followed by Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic. Ridley compares the spontaneous order of evolution with…

Six years from the Great Recession and the excuses for the tepid recovery are becoming worn. This time is different- well it always is. There may be an issue with structural changes that affect employment and wages, but this is…

Yuval Levin in The Fractured Republic brings a new and illuminating framework to understanding our state of political affairs. Both parties are engaged in political nostalgia. The Democrats see the good old days as 1965 and the Great Society and…

Yuval Levin writes a review of ‘Why Government Fails So Often’ by Peter H. Schuck in The Wall Street Journal Excerpts: To be successful, he argues, a public policy has to get six things right: incentives, instruments, information, adaptability, credibility…